[raskelll]

What I find concerning about these discussions on what qualifies as science and what doesn't is the excessive arrogance displayed by some writers, as if they stand on the same esteemed ground as the countless individuals throughout history who have propelled scientific progress and shaped the technological world we live in today. Science is a remarkable collective effort of humanity, and it is crucial that we continue to allocate resources to this endeavor.

If anything, studying the history of science would open one's eyes to the fact that the methodologies and approaches that have resulted in a vast reservoir of knowledge have not followed a linear or consistent path throughout time.

There's a quote from his first blog post titled "A Clean-Sheet Introduction to the Scientific Method" that is unironically portraying science as a human endeavour somehow relieved of everything that made "religion" bad.

> Let me start with the easy part: By "religious beliefs" I do not mean to imply that science is a religion in the usual sense. It isn't. Religions generally involve things like the worship of deities, respect for the authority of revealed wisdom, and the carrying out of prayer and rituals. Science has none of that, not because science rejects these things a priori, but because when you pursue science you are invariably (but not inevitably!) led to the conclusion that there are no deities active in our universe, and therefore no good reason to accept the authority of revealed wisdom, and hence not much point spending valuable time on prayer and ritual

Science as an insistution has all those hallmarks: worship, authority and rituals. I'm not trying to make a case for religion here, but wanted to point out the shallowness of the whole write-up. I wish these science preaching guys would actually engage in more science worthy attitudes and be a bit more humble in their holistic assessment of what does and what doesn't constitute science.

Anything goes! would Paul Feyerabend say.

[lisper]

> excessive arrogance

Why excessive? The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried. This is the whole reason science is even a thing. I think that justifies a little bit of cockiness until someone actually comes up with something better.

[raskelll]

The arrogance I mentioned is directed towards the people who think of themselves as appropriate to speak for the century-long success story of science itself while not really addressing (and understanding) how science emerged. Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science.

[lisper]

Ah.

FYI, I have a whole series of unpublished chapters about the (very messy) history of science. I decided to take this different approach because I thought it would be a more effective way of reaching my target audience.

> Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science.

That's not true. There is one box you cannot get out of without destroying the process: any hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected (and as a corollary to that, unfalsifiable hypotheses must be rejected). But yeah, beyond that pretty much anything goes.

[AnimalMuppet]

I'm with you that, if you don't close the loop via experiment, you don't have science. But you have to be careful that you not go too far, and say that science is the only way we can know truth. Logical positivism is dead for a reason. (Actually, for several reasons.)

[lisper]

> science is the only way we can know truth

You need to read the third installment in my series:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

and in particular Myth #3.

[jfengel]

I don't disagree with Myth #3, but I had a hard time getting to it after reading Myth #2:

The scientific method assumes naturalism/materialism/atheism... This is false. The scientific method contains no assumptions whatsoever. The scientific method is simply that: a method.

I don't think that's a good way to put it. There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do. A souffle recipe presupposes that you want a souffle, or you wouldn't be reading it.

The scientific method hints ambiguously at epistemological commitments, and that ambiguity is not a point in its favor. Different people make those assumptions tacitly and don't realize that they disagree with each other, and don't even apply them consistently to themselves.

I also happen to agree that the scientific method has some kind of epistemic benefit, especially as compared to the potential alternatives. But those benefits prove maddeningly difficult to nail down. The epistemic commitments always turn out to be too loose (admitting pseudosciences) or too strict (rejecting sciences that resist the kinds of experiments you'd like to do).

[6510]

I'd fill that last bit under unnecessary and undesirable processing. Things are what they are(!) A hypothesis inconsistent with experiments is a hypothesis inconsistent with experiments. It is a mistake to attempt to make more or less from it. You get nothing extra or beneficial out of the effort of rejection. A failed experiment is a failed experiment. There are lots of ways to fail. Faulty materials, defective equipment, outside influences, incompetent experimenters, poor design, POLITICS etc etc

A repeatedly failed experiment sounds just as bad as it should.

[lisper]

> repeatedly failed experiment

That is an oxymoron. A repeatedly "failed" experiment is a valid scientific result. There is even a classic example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...

[fastasucan]

>hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected

Not really, this is a conclusion that is drawn only by looking at the big names and highlights throughout the scientific history. In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed, so if the hypothesis is not confirmed through experiments the experiment design need to be fixed. Other times they are confirmed where the experiments also was flawed.

Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them.

[lisper]

> In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed

Yes, of course. Experimental error is always a possibilities, but that is just another hypothesis that needs to be considered along with all the other possibilities.

> Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them.

Like what?

[raskelll]

Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then.

Regarding your second statement, out of curiosity, I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons.

[lisper]

> Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then.

You can find them here:

https://flownet.com/ron/TIKN/

Note that they are quite drafty. That was the result of a previous effort to tackle this project of writing about the scientific method for a general audience that I ultimately abandoned in favor of this current approach. The history part starts in chapter 5.

These were based on a series of lectures I gave a few years ago. I can dig up those links too if you're interested.

> I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons.

I'm not sure what you expect me to say. The results have not been reproduced, so whatever happened in 1989 it was almost certainly not cold fusion.

[vixen99]

No, we don't yet know what's happening in that area: as the DARPA 2022 report puts it in a press release entitled 'Solid State verification of nuclear particles in electrochemical cells'. "Work should continue - much interesting science to be done. Results do not yet rise to level publishable in peer-reviewed physics journals". Bottom line: some neutrons appear and they cannot explain the mechanism. If neutrons are detected and it's definitely 'cold' then what would you call it?

There are many other reports more or less with the same proviso. 'Not yet publishable'. Many will wonder about the 'yet' but that's usually the case with potentially new areas of science.

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0153487 Li–Pd–Rh-D2O electrochemistry experiments at elevated voltage

[maxnoe]

This is easily solved by adding the well known quote (Sagan):

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

An older quote, addressing this case more directly would be (Eddington):

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — *well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes.* But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

[anuraj]

J D Bernal already addressed it through his magnum opus - Science in History.

[strogonoff]

My pet theory is that success of predictions of modern science helped us achieve a local maximum which, while useful, also makes it difficult to evolve towards a higher (globally) maximum.

The axioms are:

1. Some models are useful, but all models are necessarily incorrect, incomplete, and/or unfalsifiable. (This can be restated in an unsettling, for a natural science enthusiast, manner as “there is always the unexplained”.)

2. We cannot know where the incorrectness/incompleteness lies.

However, the arrogance of modern natural science due to its success makes us disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models and tempts us into, e.g., treating the entities described by current models (wrong, per above) as ground truth, treating consciousness (you’d think, the only thing we have direct access to) as an illusion (red flag, explaining away), etc. Thus, we get entrenched in a local maximum.

[lisper]

It's true that science is not complete, and cannot be. We know, for example, that we cannot solve the halting problem, we cannot predict chaotic systems, etc. But that's the wrong thing to focus on. There are a lot of things we can predict, and the scientific method produces better predictive theories than any other known method.

> disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models

OK, but that is not the scientific method's fault. If you want to look outside the box, nothing in the scientific method says you can't. An indeed the biggest breakthroughs have come when people have thought outside the box.

The problem is that it's often hard to distinguish between brilliance and crackpottery. But again, that's not a shortcoming of the scientific method, it's just the Way The World Is. Some problems are hard.

[dekhn]

The halting problem isn't scientific, though. It's entirely mathematical (mathematics and science are typically treated as distinct domains, see https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf for some discussion). We do not know if there is a scientific way to make a machine which exceeds the ability of a Turing machine, see for example this paragraph from the wikipedia page on the halting problem:

"It is an open question whether there can be actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a Turing machine, and in particular whether any such hypothetical process could usefully be harnessed in the form of a calculating machine (a hypercomputer) that could solve the halting problem for a Turing machine amongst other things. It is also an open question whether any such unknown physical processes are involved in the working of the human brain, and whether humans can solve the halting problem"

One of the most important things to recognize about science is that we rarely, if ever, work with absolutely well-determined systems with analytically solvable equiations. INstead, we work almost untirely with underdetermined systems with only approximate methods, and while somewhat unsatisfying, those methods are almost always a more efficient way to make falsifiable hypotheses and run experiments. I don't think anybody ever truly makes a falsifiable hypothesis- in the sense of Descartes' great deceiver, we can't truly know for certain what the underlying state of the system was.

[lisper]

> The halting problem isn't scientific, though. It's entirely mathematical

No, it isn't. The halting problem arises out of a mathematical model of a physical system. We don't know for certain that it's impossible to build an oracle for the halting problem, just as we don't know for certain that it's impossible to do an end-run around the Second Law. But the evidence in both cases is (IMHO) equally compelling.

[dekhn]

Everything written about halting machines presumes a mathematical system, not a physical system. It makes statements about model systems, some of which have physical counterparts. THe whole point of a turing machine is that it's abstract, not made of tape or transistors or anything else.

The halting problem is not really widely discussed in physics journals. They care much more about the physical limits of actual computing. If you have good examples of physics people talking about the halting problem in a non-theoretical and distant way, I'm happy to see it. But from waht I can tell, physicists are not concerned with uncomputable functions.

[strogonoff]

> the scientific method produces better predictive theories than any other known method

Better theories in what sense? (If possible, in terms that are genuinely extrinsic to scientific method itself.)

> If you want to look outside the box, nothing in the scientific method says you can't

Nothing in the scientific method says you can’t, indeed. However, some people tend to misinterpret it (possibly due to a suppressed religious impulse finding its way) as revealing objective truth through its models, as opposed to what it does: offer predictions as to what we would observe if we do X. For many of those (very smart) people, imagining radically new models that focus on different aspects (e.g., that conspicuous we above, or something else) and sideline other aspects (e.g., the various entities described by current models) is taboo.

[lisper]

> Better theories in what sense?

In their ability to make accurate predictions.

> However, some people tend to misinterpret it (possibly due to a suppressed religious impulse finding its way) as revealing objective truth through its models

But science does reveal objective truth, in the sense that it reveals truths (or at least very good approximations to truths) that are independent of what anyone's opinions are. What it does not do is reveal metaphysical truth, but that's not the same thing. But even then, it does put constraints on what metaphysical truth could be. For example, unless quantum mechanics is wrong (which is extremely unlikely) then it is not possible for metaphysical truth to be classical.

[strogonoff]

> In their ability to make accurate predictions.

That is a bit too close to defining them as better within the framework of scientific method.

For example, though I suspect you won’t like this line of question, are we by chance able to make increasingly accurate predictions about something increasingly irrelevant or not beneficial to ourselves?

Edit: I would be the first to say that the answer to that question is probably negative, but that is just to illustrate, maybe this would push you to define “better” better.

> But science does reveal objective truth, in the sense that it reveals truths (or at least very good approximations to truths) that are independent of what anyone's opinions are

Models are metaphors to aid our minds in coming up with more predictions to test. If a model was able to predict N outcomes that does not make it correct, unless you can guarantee that there will not be a future outcome that makes that model incorrect, which you cannot as that notion would presume you have come up with a provably correct and complete model in finite time.

> But even then, it does put constraints on what metaphysical truth could be. For example, unless quantum mechanics is wrong (which is extremely unlikely) then it is not possible for metaphysical truth to be classical.

I cannot object to that, except the part where you claim that quantum mechanics being wrong is extremely unlikely. I will stand by my initial assumptions and claim that it is not just extremely likely but a near certainty that quantum mechanics is wrong—just because it is foolish to assume that any of today’s models is finally correct and true. It may be useful in meantime, though.

[strogonoff]

> We know, for example, that we cannot solve the halting problem, we cannot predict chaotic systems, etc.

This violates the second axiom I assume: in your examples, we know where the incompleteness lies. If you disagree that not knowing that would necessarily hold for modeling the system that we are part of, then perhaps we won’t be on the same page to argue productively.

[lisper]

Sorry, that didn't parse. What do you mean by "the second axiom"? What axioms are you talking about?

[strogonoff]

> My pet theory is that success of predictions of modern science helped us achieve a local maximum which, while useful, also makes it difficult to evolve towards a higher (globally) maximum.

> The axioms are:

> 1. Some models are useful, but all models are necessarily incorrect, incomplete, and/or unfalsifiable. (This can be restated in an unsettling, for a natural science enthusiast, manner as “there is always the unexplained”.)

> 2. We cannot know where the incorrectness/incompleteness lies.

(It is an axiom because I strongly suspect I will maintain this position but am not willing to spend time defending it. Maybe I should call it “assumption”.)

[mikhailfranco]

I don't think that all models are necessarily incorrect. Scientific models are precisely correct until they are falsified.

For example, the inverse-square law for electromagnetism and Newtonian gravity is just an exact feature of continuous 3D space (surface area of a sphere). It only became an approximation when Einstein proposed warped spacetime, and will become even more incorrect in detail, if/when someone finds evidence for discrete spacetime structure. Then the inverse square law becomes a double approximation, over macro and micro structure of spacetime (lattice, wolfram graph, spin foam, ...).

It just so happens that at the moment, we know that the whole of physics is pervasively incomplete (approximate nonsense), so very few current models are likely to be preserved in future better theories. QFT is a terrible hack, with renormalization and virtual hand-waving. QFT depends on a fixed background spacetime, but we know that background is dynamic (GR). We don't know how QFT and GR fit together, but I would guess almost all current models are incorrect.

However, it is possible that some future Theory of Everything is correct indefinitely (until end of civilization, while not being ontologically True, of course).

[ordu]

> the arrogance of modern natural science due to its success makes us disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models

I'd say it is not the arrogance that stops us, but the sheer amount of work invested into current theories. You cannot match it with mere personal effort.

> treating the entities described by current models (wrong, per above) as ground truth

Psychology shares one special property with sociology and economics: theories not just describe a object of a research, they change the object. In some obvious ways (like popularization of IQ scores makes life easier for people with high IQ score) and in less obvious ways.

It doesn't mean that anything said by a psychologists becomes true, but many things are. I'd bet that even if consciousness was not an illusion it is now.

[spywaregorilla]

Seems to me we have very strongly evidenced beliefs about where incompleteness lies.

[strogonoff]

Consciousness is perhaps the most glaring one (as far as current models offered by natural sciences are concerned), if nothing else then because we deal with it every moment of existence or because it is what natural science itself stems from, is shaped by, is dependent on and exists because of.

Of course, whether it is the only unknown is unknown.

[lisper]

Have you read Dennett's book?

[strogonoff]

No, but I’m familiar with his take on consciousness and it is more or less what I mean by thinking in the box of existing models and trying to explain away something inconvenient to them.

[keiferski]

Arrogance is almost by definition against the values of scientific inquiry, and so if you see someone placing science on a quasi-religious pedestal, you’d best be skeptical of whatever that person is selling.

This tends to go with excessive praise of particular thinkers and the wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers as “manifest nonsense” or some other ill-informed claptrap.

If you read actual philosophy of science books and papers by real philosophers, you’ll find that the attitude is more appropriate and not so laudatory. As it should be.

[lisper]

> wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers

Like what?

[keiferski]

Like dismissing the work of Feyerabend or Wittgenstein without seemingly having read either:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...

I'm really not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take writings about the philosophy of science when the author thinks major thinkers in the field, like Feyerabend, are just writing gibberish. That's...not really a serious opinion, whether you agree with his ideas or not.

[BoingBoomTschak]

About Feyerabend, a quick glance at Wikipedia (with all its massive biases) showed me a dubious character that would fit perfectly into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense...

Actually, a search inside said book vindicated this sentiment.

Anyway, when I see "philosopher" and "20th century" together, my bullshit radar gets extremely attentive.

[lisper]

I read Feyerabend a long time ago. It was recommended to me by someone I deeply respect so I was predisposed to like it, but it struck me as unalloyed nonsense. It was a long time ago and I don't really remember the details any more. My impression is that Feyerabend is mostly cited by crackpots who are bitter because they are not being taken seriously.

However, this question too can be settled empirically: can you point to any useful results that were produced by someone who credits them to Wittgenstein or Feyerabend? I'm not aware of any.

[keiferski]

It's really crazy to me that your argument is literally, "I read it a long time ago and don't remember," as if that is supposed to be convincing.

Like I said, this isn't a serious discussion.

[wddkcs]

That would depend upon what you count as a prediction. The Oracles of Delphi operated for hundreds of years, the Sibylline Oracles were relied upon for thousands of years, and both were universally regarded in their day as unnerving accurate. Dismissing their longevity as religious superstition I would argue is itself anti-science. It is the arrogance of dismissing such history that leads people to eventually declare themselves to be 'the science'.

[lisper]

Actually, science can explain oracles. There is a whole field of study devoted to understanding how to deceive people. It's considered more art than science, but it actually is both. It's called "magic". And there is a whole sub-field of magic called mentalism that deals specifically with things like what the oracles did.

BTW, since you brought up oracles, you might enjoy this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

[mistermann]

What if your premises are less solid than they seem, and because of the "our thinking style is not only better on a relative scale, on average, it is near flawless in an absolute sense" mindset that often comes along with the culture of "science" you're unable to even consider such possibilities?

[lisper]

What premises? The scientific method has no premises, it's just a method. If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities. The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment.

[mistermann]

> What premises?

- The objective fact of the matter

- the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried

- This is the whole reason science is even a thing

- I think

- that justifies

- a little bit of cockiness

- until someone actually comes up with something better

- [reality], the phenomenon that shall not be discussed, upon which your entire argument/experience/reality rests

> The scientific method has no premises

https://www.google.com/search?q=axioms+of+science+site%3Aphi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism

> it's just a method.

By "just", do you mean only?

If so, you have a burden of proof on your hands (and proofs of nonexistence are some of the trickiest, in no small, part because they typically have the appearance of being (thus "are") the easiest).

If not, what do you mean?

An angle to test your claim against: are scientists a part of science? If not, how does "science" accomplish anything in the material plane (concrete reality)?

> If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities.

a) Is "I am unable to consider..." actually happening though, in shared reality? (Is this mind reading, or persuasive, misinformative rhetoric?)

b) What if your "Science is just (only) a method" premise is not true though? What if science also has culture (like most any organization involving Humans), or even a style of thinking (say, delusions of omniscience, or Pure Perfect Rationality)?

c) Might you have any shortcomings in your mental abilities, and is it possible that those shortcomings could cause unrealized/unrealizable (due to your cultural thinking style) error in your evaluation of my mental abilities?

> The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment.

If these claims are True (in JTB, be careful your mind doesn't get so obsessed with the "J" that you forget all about the "T", or forget that the "B" is ever present, and very misleading), you should be able to present a proof (an articulation of one of your own, or simply link to or reference by name an existing one).

Do you have the ability do do that, and if so can you demonstrate you actually have the ability, by actually doing it, physically, in this thread?

(inb4: "well of course I'm just expressing my opinion, that's all everyone is ever doing", and various other rhetorical get out of jail free (or, look over there) cards science folks appeal to when they get caught engaging in Scientific Soothsaying.)

Also, let the record show that you did not even attempt to address the majority of my comment (perhaps you will later, I am just pointing it out).

[lisper]

I don't think you understand what the word "premise" means. None of the examples you give are premises. Most of them aren't even complete sentences.

Yes, I know that a lot of people say that science has premises. They are simply mistaken.

> By "just", do you mean only?

Yes.

> If so, you have a burden of proof on your hands

What exactly is it that you think I need to prove?

> If these claims are True

You need to read this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

particularly Myth #3.

[mistermann]

I am happy to stand as is:

- you leaving all of my questions unanswered

- you essentially declaring victory, as is the culture of science's style when encountering inconvenient questions, or the unknown.

Congratulations.

[nairboon]

> The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried.

Which scientific method? As far as i know, there is no such thing as "the scientific method". Though, there are many methods.

[mr_mitm]

Which ones do you know? I have only heard it referred to in this context, that there is the scientific method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

[lisper]

No, there is only one scientific method, which is to say, one method that works better than any other to produce theories with predictive power. I describe it in the inaugural post of the series:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti...

If you know of a process that works better than the one described that would be Big News.

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...

[remoquete]

Ah, Feyerabend. So often shunned and belittled as an enemy of science—so often feared. His conversations with Imre Lakatos still hold up well to this day.

For an unbiased analysis of Feyerabend's impact, I recommend this book review:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3186788/

[keiferski]

The common thread among scientisim-followers is that few have actually bothered to read a book or paper on the philosophy of science by actual philosophers, and instead have adopted science as an identity label.

One consequence of this is how religion is now juxtaposed directly with science, because if the atheists are scientism-followers, then religious people must be anti-science. This is directly contrary to how most scientific innovators thought about the relationship of science to religion (Newton as a prime example.)

[jskherman]

Indeed, anything goes! What matters is the result of experiments. Fundamentally science is about understanding more about the world. It does not matter if there are "magical" or "mythical" entities or not. In fact, I would even argue that my current position as to science and religion is similar to that of the position taken by Georges Lemaître.

There's a lot of peculiarity when you study science and even math. Some things just seem too elegant to be coincidental like Euler's equation and the phenomenon of emergence, but even if they are coincidental that realization of coincidence and the slim chance of it happening is also fascinating. On the other hand there are also mind-boggingly unelegant things about nature that require empirical methods because exact and analytical methods aren't cutting it to describe phenomena. It feels all like a mish-mash of different mechanics/rules put together. I do believe Lemaître understood it well that by researching the sciences we also, in its own way, are trying to learn and know about God and his creations (assuming you accept the axiom that God created the universe).

[tossandthrow]

This comment beautifully assembles everything I hate about institutionalised "science".

> as if they stand on the same esteemed ground as the countless individuals throughout history who have propelled scientific progress

There could absolutely not exist a more anti-scientific sentiment than this. This sentiment is what erodes the core of development. Esteemed my b*t.

As a tenured professor you ar entitled to absolutely nothing. The fact that you decides masochism on yourself does not allow you to have any masochistic behaviour towards students and staff.

Science is about accepting and realising the ideas that best possible describe the real world. If you can get direction out of history to do this well, be my guest. But do not set history og science up as a dogma to access an exclusive group.

What this comment is describing the the "religion of scientific institutions" and has nothing to do with science.

[mistermann]

> Science is about accepting and realising the ideas that best possible describe the real world.

> What this comment is describing the "religion of scientific institutions" and has nothing to do with science.

Do you consider the real world actions of scientists to be a part of science? I think anyone who attributes scientific accomplishments to "science" must (at least when it serves their purposes, more on this below). This then (can) lead to the distinction between scientific scripture/intent/aspiration (the scientific method, etc) and things as they actually are. How is it possible to possess knowledge of what all scientists do, and not do, in fact (without resorting to the supernatural, or evasive rhetoric as one commonly witnesses politicians engage in as they dodge a question pointed at a legitimate weakness in a narrative)?

Another angle is whether negative consequences of the actions of scientists should be attributed to science or not. In my experience, negative consequences somehow do not count, and there are few disciplines other than science that get this sort of a free ride in our culture... The only one that comes to my mind is (so-called) "democracy".

[raverbashing]

Agree

Popperians wish science behaved the way they wanted it to behave

I'm still waiting to figure out how Popperians get their ideas for theories because "officially" they can't get them from anywhere (since anything not proven by experiments is "wrong" in their head).

[xkcd-sucks]

There was a really good comment from someone here a while ago I failed to favorite that basically resolved "science" into a few separate concepts, like:

    * The ... front line bench top process; messing with the world, observing what happens, iterating based on observation, hypothesis testing, modeling reality and testing the model, etc
    * The *accumulated record of knowledge* related to everything, where faith matters -- Given this record is inherently subjective (if nothing else, re: the current state of knowledge when written!), what of this record of knowledge do you trust, what do you confirm, how deeply etc.
    * something else

[civilized]

> Science as an insistution has all those hallmarks: worship, authority and rituals. I'm not trying to make a case for religion here, but wanted to point out the shallowness of the whole write-up.

He's talking about science as a set of ideals, not human institutions that try to do science.

There's a real difference between the scientific mindset and the religious mindset in whether fundamental questioning is considered virtuous. This difference matters.

[pierrebai]

The fact that science and religion can have similar flaws or components is shallow. Churches in the US and universities in the US both use English. That does not make them the same.

What makes science is a self-consistent framework and tree of knowledge that successfully model the universe and for which proof and experiments can repeatedly redone giving the (approximate) same results.

All religions fail on one or more of these criteria.

[_wire_]

> Anything goes! would Paul Feyerabend say.

"You can’t go to a physics conference and say: I’ve got a great theory. It accounts for everything and is so simple it can be captured in two words: 'Anything goes.'”- Noam Chomsky